Week 9: Inventing Popular Culture

I found this week's readings interesting... it's just too bad that in large it didn't address our topic.

Two quotes, however, really struck me as I was reading this week:

1) "We make history and we are made by history; we make culture and we are made by culture. Culture (like language) both enables and constrains." (Storey, Inventing Popular Culture, 2003. 60.)

This was an empowering quote. It helped to read that we are not merely victims of culture. That instead we have a say. It is true that we become products of our culture. But we become products of a culture that we create. And so, with that thought, it is possible to change our culture and change ourselves and identities.

In relation to HIV/AIDS, we have noticed that there are many barriers to getting the proper care to developing countries. The immediate urge is to want to try to revolutionize that particular culture so that many of those barriers would be knocked down. But we would be wise to look to our own culture and country and see that there are barriers here as well that prevent those suffering from HIV/AIDS from receiving the proper treatment socially and medically. As products of this culture, what can we do to change/mold/shape our own culture?

2) "Consumption is a significant part of the circulation of shared and conflicting meanings we call culture. We communicate through what we consume." (Ibid. 78.)

What is implied here is that we can change culture by changing our consumption. If we are to be serious about changing the culture of the western church as many of us seem to be suggesting, we would doing well according to Storey by examining what we consume. What does the North American church consume? What does the church tell us to consume? What does the church inadvertantly advertise?

This is coming from my own personal bias, but, my limited observations thus far indicate that the North American church advertises owning property, having the latest and coolest of gadgets, dressing well with name brand products (sometimes faux name brand products that are overtly "Christian"), driving a car, having a talented motivational speaker speak every week, and listening to the in-music or playing the in-music with expensive band equipment, among others.

I wonder if we know what we're asking for when we say that the North American church needs to change. Are we cognizant of the costs? Do we realize that some of the things that we have grown accustomed to, grown to love and embrace about our churches are the very things that in very subtle ways lull us into becoming the very people we want to change within our churches?

Concretely, are we as churches willing to sacrifice buying a multi-channel sound board, and instead opt to support World Vision's work against HIV/AIDS? We would not see the results of such work immediately. We may not see it work within our community. We may not see it work with our own eyes at all. And perhaps that is just it. Perhaps it is not overt greed that prevents us from action as much as it is a desire to know for sure that our money is being used well and makes a difference. When we buy the sound board, we can hear the difference the next Sunday. The effect is felt. But when we give that same money overseas, often, we simply don't observe any difference, and the disappointment sets in.